Coromandel Baptist Church
Sunday 14 March 2010 Bible Readings Galatians 5:13-26 and Ephesians 2:11-22
Receiving the Father's Spirit
The gift of the Spirit is the goal of God's actions for the nations, that they may be blessed (in accordance with the promise to Abraham) by being his children. Paul makes this clear, for example in Galatians 3:14 where he writes that the goal of redemption is ‘so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith'. The Spirit is the Spirit of adoption. He is poured out from God the Father through his Son to bring new birth, and to bring the gifts of the Father's grace by virtue of our union with the Son. Indeed, in the coming of the Spirit, the Father and the Son all take up their abode in us the people of God (John 14:23). The Father's purpose in all that he has done is to have the nations reconciled in his presence, under the reign of his Peace.
Through the gift of redemption, the love of the Father and the Son is now our true home (1 John 4:15-16). As the Son lived and moved in the Spirit's fullness, so, as we live in him, we too know the fullness of the Father's Spirit. This is what we are created for. Thus the fruit of the Spirit is not an ‘adornment' to our life in the Father's family, but the sum and substance of it. It is God's grace gift to the nations, that they may be blessed.
We go in living in the fullness of the Spirit as we go on hearing the word of the gospel by faith (as Paul argues in Galatians 3). This is how we go in faith, to be filled with the Spirit. Law-way does not bring this fullness of participation in the Spirit's life. Law-way belongs to the Flesh, which is the natural soil in which the life of all the nations takes root and which feeds all human pride and ambition. The nations are marked by the deeds of the Flesh. Only in the Father's family do we find the fruit of his own Spirit.
Just as in the Old Testament the Lord brought his people out of one kingdom to transfer them to another (i.e. to himself, as in Ex. 19:4), so in the new exodus accomplished in Christ we are transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the son of his love (Col. 1:13-14). This exodus is only possible through the forgiveness of sins which can only be granted on the basis of the work of Christ on our behalf (so Col. 2:13-15). However, that work is complete and the forgiveness is real, so in the proclamation of that great event God releases captives from the realm of the Flesh and Satan, and opens their eyes that they may be his own children (Acts 26:18). Their inheritance is now his. For this inheritance we are sealed by the Spirit and given the Spirit as a pledge (Eph. 1:13-14).
This great gift of the Spirit does not come by works of the Law, but by hearing with faith (Gal. 3:1ff.). The whole of the book of the Acts proves this point (as summarised, for example, in Peter's words in Acts 14:15-18). To go on in the fullness of the Spirit is to go on hearing with faith. The Spirit bears his fruit in our lives, which is none other than the fruit of the life of the Father and the Son. It is the harvest of love. The fruit of the Spirit is the fulfilment of the Law, since love is the fulfilment of the Law (cf. Rom. 13:8-10; Gal. 5:14; Matt. 22:39-40). Faith working through love is the way of life of the Father's family, for it is the Life of the Son being worked out in the Spirit of the Father's children (Gal. 5:6). In Christ a new creation has been brought about. He is the one True Man, in all the redeemed find their life and peace (Eph. 2:15 cf. Gal. 3:27-29; 6:15; Col. 3:11).
The Flesh and Spirit are two entities in Paul's theology. They are at war with one another, and the Flesh will never submit to the Spirit, indeed it cannot do so. Instead, the people of God in Jesus are transferred out of the Flesh, with its associated demands of Law, wrath, conscience, death and the Accuser's enslaving voice. In their Good Shepherd they hear the True Voice of God, who leads them to their resting place (as in Ps. 23). The servants of the Lamb, in proclaiming his gospel to the flock of God, release them by the reality of the finished work of God the Father in the Son to serve him without fear. This is the goal of all true pastoral and priestly ministry.
Thus, in proclaiming the gospel of our Lord Jesus, the church offers the nations the promised blessing to Abraham. In receiving that proclamation by grace, the nations are liberated from the strident voice of the Satanic Pharaoh who enslaves them to the Flesh. God the Father brings his family to birth in the power of the Spirit, as he reveals Christ and him crucified to the hearts of men and women. In the New Man, there is now only one race, whose life is nothing less than (or other than) the fruit of the Father's Spirit. This is true healing for the nations, for the fruit of the Spirit are the leaves of the Tree of Life. |
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